The following example represents the addition of two paragraphs, the second of which was
inserted in two parts. The first ins element in this example thus crosses a
paragraph boundary, which is considered poor form.

<aside><!-- don’t do this --><insdatetime="2005-03-16 00:00Z"><p> I like fruit. </p>
Apples are <em>tasty</em>.
</ins><insdatetime="2007-12-19 00:00Z">
So are pears.
</ins></aside>

Here is a better way of marking this up. It uses more elements, but none of the elements cross
implied paragraph boundaries.

<aside><insdatetime="2005-03-16 00:00Z"><p> I like fruit. </p></ins><insdatetime="2005-03-16 00:00Z">
Apples are <em>tasty</em>.
</ins><insdatetime="2007-12-19 00:00Z">
So are pears.
</ins></aside>

The cite attribute may be used to specify the
address of a document that explains the change. When that document is long, for instance the
minutes of a meeting, authors are encouraged to include a fragment pointing to the
specific part of that document that discusses the change.

If the cite attribute is present, it must be a valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces that explains the change. To obtain the
corresponding citation link, the value of the attribute must be parsed relative to the
element’s node document. User agents may allow users to follow such citation links, but
they are primarily intended for private use (e.g., by server-side scripts collecting statistics
about a site’s use of quotations), not for readers.

The datetime attribute may be used to specify
the time and date of the change.

4.6.4. Edits and paragraphs

This section is non-normative.

Since the ins and del elements do not affect paragraphing, it is possible, in some cases where paragraphs are implied (without explicit p elements), for an ins or del element to span both an entire paragraph or other
non-phrasing content elements and part of another paragraph. For example:

<section><ins><p>
This is a paragraph that was inserted.
</p>
This is another paragraph whose first sentence was inserted
at the same time as the paragraph above.
</ins>
This is a second sentence, which was there all along.
</section>

By only wrapping some paragraphs in p elements, one can even get the end of one
paragraph, a whole second paragraph, and the start of a third paragraph to be covered by the same ins or del element (though this is very confusing, and not considered
good practice):

<section> This is the first paragraph. <ins>This sentence was
inserted.
<p>This second paragraph was inserted.</p>
This sentence was inserted too.</ins> This is the
third paragraph in this example.
<!-- (don’t do this) -->
</section>

However, due to the way implied paragraphs are defined, it is
not possible to mark up the end of one paragraph and the start of the very next one using the same ins or del element. You instead have to use one (or two) p element(s) and two ins or del elements, as for example:

<section><p>This is the first paragraph. <del>This sentence was
deleted.</del></p><p><del>This sentence was deleted too.</del> That
sentence needed a separate &lt;del&gt; element.</p></section>

Partly because of the confusion described above, authors are strongly encouraged to always mark
up all paragraphs with the p element, instead of having ins or del elements that cross implied paragraphs boundaries.

4.6.5. Edits and lists

This section is non-normative.

The content models of the ol and ul elements do not allow ins and del elements as children. Lists always represent all their
items, including items that would otherwise have been marked as deleted.

To indicate that an item is inserted or deleted, an ins or del element can be wrapped around the contents of the li element. To indicate that an
item has been replaced by another, a single li element can have one or more del elements followed by one or more ins elements.

In the following example, a list that started empty had items added and removed from it over
time. The bits in the example that have been emphasized show the parts that are the "current"
state of the list. The list item numbers don’t take into account the edits, though.

In the following example, a list that started with just fruit was replaced by a list with just
colors.

<h1>List of <del>fruits</del><ins>colors</ins></h1><ul><li><del>Lime</del><ins>Green</ins></li><li><del>Apple</del></li><li>Orange</li><li><del>Pear</del></li><li><ins>Teal</ins></li><li><del>Lemon</del><ins>Yellow</ins></li><li>Olive</li><li><ins>Purple</ins></li></ul>

4.6.6. Edits and tables

This section is non-normative.

The elements that form part of the table model have complicated content model requirements that
do not allow for the ins and del elements, so indicating edits to a
table can be difficult.

To indicate that an entire row or an entire column has been added or removed, the entire
contents of each cell in that row or column can be wrapped in ins or del elements (respectively).